The Rookie just killed off a personality in a shocking death scene ahead of the season 8 finale.
Through the Monday, April 27, episode of the hit ABC series, Monica (Bridget Regan) tried to get away from the Feds and the arms dealer she crossed.
She tried to search out a technique to run away — after having a conversation with ex Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) — but her trip to the airport took a turn when the motive force passed the LAX exit.
Monica accepted her fate by just asking that the motive force not shoot her “within the face.” As a substitute, Monica is shot twice within the chest and her body is left on the side of the road for Tim (Eric Winter), Nolan (Nathan Fillion), Nyla (Mekia Cox), Angela (Alyssa Diaz), Grey (Richard T. Jones) and Garza (Felix Solis) to search out before Wesley joined them.
“When [showrunner] Alexi [Hawley] called me — I mean, well, initially, every time a showrunner calls you, you’ve gotten to be fearful that it’s the decision of death. But truly, I used to be not surprised. I used to be thrilled that she lasted so long as she did,” Regan told TV Insider. “If you happen to play with fire, so long as she has, eventually you’re going to get burned. And as I said to Alexi and everybody, I used to be like, she’s not on her ninth life. She’s on her thirty seventh.”
Regan identified that Monica “escaped multiple assassinations and prison time.”
“When her number was finally up, I wasn’t surprised. I believed, fair enough. She’s had a tremendous run, 4 years on this show. I’m only full of gratitude,” she continued. “But what I used to be surprised by was just how incredibly sad I used to be for her. Not that she died, but that she never truly flipped, that she actually succumbed to the dark side and couldn’t find her way back. And I felt like there was this version of Monica that might have been something else, but she just could never get there. So to me, that was the true heartbreak of all of it.”
The actress recalled being promised an epic onscreen death, adding, “You hear about all these famous shows where everyone’s dying on a regular basis, like The Sopranos, etc. Everyone’s reading the script, going, ‘Do I die? Do I die? Do I die? Do I die?’ I all the time had that at the back of my mind because I felt prefer it was inevitable. Either in some unspecified time in the future, she was going to go to jail, or she was going to die.”
For Regan, it was special attending to see Monica exit on her own terms.
“What’s so fun about her is she is who she is. The ‘not within the face’ line is how she’s all the time going to be her vain, fabulous, greedy self. That’s just who she is. She will be terribly smug,” she noted. “With Monica, you’re all the time walking that line. She must be confident enough that you just imagine she will be able to hold her own on this criminal world, but I all the time wanted her to be believable, but there’s also something deliciously excessive about who she is. She’s so fun, and she or he refuses to be anything but herself. And so yeah, we were all the time calibrating.”
Regan admitted that wrapping up her time on The Rookie “was emotional,” saying, “It was heavy. I used to be bummed. I used to be like, oh man, that is such an incredible show to be an element of. But I did feel like, creatively, it was time for her to go. Because if we’re going to say that she’s messing with all these dangerous criminals from Elijah to Aiden to Cooper Johnson, it might be unbelievable if it didn’t catch up together with her in some unspecified time in the future.”
The Rookie airs on ABC Mondays at 10 p.m. ET.